Bulgaria, Romania to grow strongest among EU newcomers in 2012 - World Bank
Bulgaria and Romania, hit by the crisis later than other European Union (EU) states, will record the highest economic growth among the new members of the bloc in 2012, Romanian news agency Agerpres reported on Tuesday, citing data from the World Bank's EU-10 Regular Economic Report.
Two and a half years after the start of the global economic crisis, the economic activity in the new EU member states (EU-10) is recovering in tandem with the developments in the old members (EU-15), the agency said.
The pace of recovery among EU-10 countries will strengthen in 2011 and 2012, but it will be different in each of the 10 states, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
"Romania is expected to lead the economic recovery in 2012 compared with the other EU-10 countries with an economic growth of 4.4%," Catalin Pauna, senior economist at the World Bank and co-author of the report, said.
As to Bulgaria, the World Bank expects an improvement of 3.4% in 2012.(Source: Dnevnik)